Enchanted Princess:
Your letters travel so long a route to reach me that I tremble lest sometime they should grow weary and stop off permanently, on the way. Will you not send them direct to the Yale Club? I am in and out of town all week, and will always go there for my mail. I, of course, shall have to stick to the White Mountain itinerary. But your word is law.
I was very glad to hear about the King and the Lady-in-Waiting and the Castle. Yet it is yourself I want a pen-sketch of. On second thoughts, perhaps, unconsciously, you are making it for me.
I live—but no, it would never do to tell you! I shall have to move in order to provide a poet with a less prosaic setting. I am desolate in having no Sarah to anticipate my wants; and—no Father. However, tucked away, where no one can steal her from me, I possess a Mother! A mother with tiny hands and feet, and the prettiest red hair in the world. This is too bewildering a shade for a Mother's hair to flaunt! She has added charm to beauty by acquiring somewhere merry blue eyes, with an Irish twinkle in them. And a kindly angel has set these jewels deftly in the sweetest face. You would love her, I know, and I am generously willing to share her with you if in return I may claim a bit of your Father. Between us we could manage to own a perfectly good pair of parents, couldn't we?
But for the sake of my peace of mind, will you translate, interpret, or explain "Peter" to me?
Do tell me about your visitors! Do they come to see you—I beg your pardon! I mean, do gallant knights ever gallop up to the drawbridge on coal-black chargers, and blow lustily on a silver trumpet, at the postern gate—whatever that is!—for admission? And does a certain lady ever graciously bid her varlets give them entrance? Tell me this, and what you read, and what you think. And if you will whisper to me, just how many years have left you lovelier than the year before, I will confess to you that I am Way-Past-Thirty!
Yours,
Richard Warren
The Castle
July 26th
Dear Merlin:
He was an aged wizard, you know.